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Occasionally water comes into our cellar. We already have a sump pump and perforated collecting pipe down there which works fine, but in recent years it has started coming in at the opposite corner. The specialist who did the sump pump 14 years ago proposes to deal with it by running another...

Previous owner had a veneered cherry floor put down in the shower room about 30 years ago. Some of the veneer has come off. Three patches, about 6 square inches in all. The veneer is of uneven thickness, and some of the the underboard has damp damage so it's wavy. I've glued down the loose...

I have some new thinseal units with leaded lights, to be set into stone surrounds in our listed cottage. They will have to be fronted with glazing compound so that it looks like putty, and then painted. What would you use? Seven years ago I used Kawo Elastokitt for wood windows, but the...

I have some 6" Minton Hollins left over from tiling our bathroom in 1991. I'd like to use them in our new bathroom, I can cope with the 6" not being quite 6" any more when I mix them with new tiles but I see that in the intervening 34 years, wall tiles have got quite a lot thinner, in fact...

So I expected to pick up some glue size in my local DIY shop but it seems to have vanished, even Dulux Decorator Centre don't have any. I have one sheet of plasterboard to paper over with lining paper... thinking to dilute some paste... in the past, on the packets of paste it used to give...

Back when I was alive, basins had square holes and taps had a square on the bottom so they don't move when you shut them off. Mind you, even 30 years ago that started going pear-shaped, I remember putting new taps in an old basin where I created the squares on the taps by locking two brass...

What used to be a normal tap. Basin tap. Hot. Maybe 60 years old. Half-inch rubber washer, which I need to change. The cross-head comes off OK and the easy-clean cover, but the body is soooo tight. I remember there was/is a tool you put over the tap then it levers on itself to undo. Quite...

Painting an old internal door. Part old paint, part sanded to bare wood. Oil primer, oil undercoat, Sikkens AZ oil topcoat, all of which I've used before. After sanding, I used a tack rag before painting. Sanded between coats as well of course, and tack rag again. The rags, kept in their...

I need to remove three 6x3" tiles from the top of a row. Preferably unbroken. I'm raising the tiling height above them and I can't just go on up as they are rolled edge so the grout won't stick or will look too thick. I'm also concerned about loosening the nearby tiles. I've cut out the grout...

Our 9kw Mira shower has just eaten a second pullcord switch in ... not many years. An MK, in this case, about 3 years old. The neon glows faintly, but no power to the shower. I switch it off after each use. Do I need to, or can I just leave it on?

No silicone thankyou!! What's your favourite method of sealing onto the rim of a bath? Existing bath - 60s, enamelled - has quadrant tiles which have lasted pretty well, do not leak and are not loose. New bath - Villeroy and Boch - made of quartz/acrylic, should be pretty rigid. Unfortunately...

1960s extension, hard concrete block internal wall. To put a power shower on that wall I need to chase for the 15mm copper feed pipe, and the electric of course. Any recommendation for a power chaser? Probably just for this job, but one never knows. Never fitted a power shower, how deep do I...

Looking for a deeper bath. I was thinking of a Japanese-style soaker, but they look a pain to climb in and out especially for the OH. Then I looked at deep baths with a door, looks like more pain if the seals leak. So, just a standard bath but deeper. Length 1650 - width of our bathroom. Best...

I plan to put in a deeper bath. Which holds more water. Up to 90 gallons. The purpose of a deeper bath is so I can have a nice wallow, which I can't in the present one. So the standard cylinder 36" x 18" that holds around 25 gallons will no longer be large enough. Or will it...? I could put a...

A local craft group is making a large mosaic using bits of tiles on three sheets of 6x2 ext ply. Using PVA to stick the tesserae. I think the ply should be primed with PVA or the mosaic will eventually fall off. What do you think?

Not sure if this should be in the Electricals board, anyway... So, being a fan of electrical antiquities, two years ago I installed this NOS Ekco room stat to run a 1kw kick heater. Probably 1960s. Used it with a clockwork Horstmann time switch. The wiring options for the stat were with and...

Our electric water heater is mains fed by a pipe that comes down from the attic. I want to get rid of it as it trails across the walls of two bedrooms (very old house). There is a mains pipe in the cellar I can use. Any problem feeding from below rather than above? This is the heater. The...

I found a Pur..... something... water filter in the 15mm mains feed to our mixer tap in the kitchen. Can only see part of one end at the moment, hence the Pur.... At least ten years old, could be a lot more. It's completely inaccessible behind a cupbd so there was no thought of changing the...

I need to remove the external alarm box/siren for maintenance of the wall to which its attached. Presumably if I use the engineer code, switch off the mains to the panel and remove the control panel battery I will be OK? The battery in the siren box, if any, is fifteen years old and hopefully...

Block wall, 60s. Sound cement render then old masonry paint. Got a lot of the paint off, but can't get rid of all the mist coat. Need to render over the render, to add 3/4" of thickness. 4:1:1 cement lime sand then 5:1:1 I think I should start with a bonding agent. SBR seems to be a favourite...